Samgyetang Recipe : Korean Ginseng Chicken Soup, 삼계탕 (蔘鷄湯)

December 10, 2014

蔘: 인삼 삼 (Ginseng: Sam) , 鷄: 닭 계 (Chicken: Gye), 湯: 탕 (Soup: Tang)

Samgyetang. One of historical dish from Korea.

My dad used to take me to this Samgyetang restaurant in South Korea, where we lived every summer time. They serve a shot of ginseng liquor to every guests, even you are a kid. The ginseng shot is for the health, not to drunk purpose, so my dad always led me drink the ginseng shot first before the meal.

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Ginseng warms your body from inside out as well as chicken. Usually summer time(when the weather is hot) our outer body is hot so our inner body is very busy to cool the body down. So drink or eating cold food makes our tummy even more colder. That is why people get sick easily with the food during the summer time. Some smart Koreans figured it out and recommended to eat warm and hot food during summer time.

So traditionally we eat Samgyetang 3 times during the summer. The beginning, the middle and the end.

Protein wasn’t always available for everybody back then in Korea, even 50, 60 years ago. So Samgyetang helped provide strength through out challenging hot weather. It is consider as a stamina food. 😉

I understand the Samgyetang herbal ingredient kit is hard to find in some places, so here are the links I found where you can buy from internet.

Looks like a delicious recipe and very similar to what my mom would make me as a child when I was sick- chicken aroz caldo. I’d love to try to make this dish. In the video, when you make the porridge, it looks like you put a seasoning in addition to the rice. Maybe you excluded it by mistake? Please let me know. Thank you.

Hello Elanine!
This is is definitely what my mom would cook when I don’t feel 100% too! 🙂
The soup is not seasoned at all, so we serve with the salt mixture and you dip chicken into salt mixture and add the salt mixture into your soup while you are eating it.
I added the leftover salt mixture (which I served with the chicken soup at the beginning) since the porridge needs some seasoning and there is nothing wrong with the leftover salt mixture to use that purpose! 🙂
Hope this helped!